News media organizations adopted satellite broadcast technology to disseminate news worldwide to their readers. Satellite technology fit all the needs of a news broadcast system. This technology was fast, reliable, and insured that the receiving public all saw the information at relatively the same time. Competition set in and news organizations started competing for the broadcast readership dollars. The faster and better geographic coverage of the broadcast network, the more readers could receive information, be it news, sports or entertainment programs, the more revenue could be generated for the news organization.
The business community adopted this medium. By the mid-1970s, the PR wire services were using satellites to build full domestic networks in the United States that could send corporate information quickly to media all over the country. As the PR wire services became the accepted and trusted information disseminator for corporations, the wire services took on the additional role as the official provider of “disclosure” for public corporations.
The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) now requires publicly traded corporations to disclose key information periodically about any corporation to the public in a fair and simultaneous manner. Examples of this type of information are quarterly earnings statistics, product announcements and management changes. Simultaneous disclosure provides that all users of corporate information such as investment firms and news agencies all have equal and simultaneous access to corporate information. This insures that no one organization would have an advantage over another in using the information for any purpose.
Demand for corporate information continues to grow as news and investment firms compete for the public's dollar. Therefore, the role of the PR news wire is expanding to provide fast, electronic, and simultaneous delivery of required disclosures and general press release information. Satellite technology was the key method for broadcasting the news to the various media, investment, and research communities.
FIG. 1 depicts a Satellite Information Distribution System 100 currently used in the industry. In this system, a Local Mainframe 106 receives Client Submissions 102 through an Order Entry 104 application and then distributes a news release over Distribution Lines 112 to Satellite Uplinks 116 throughout the distribution network. Such Satellite Uplinks 116 then transmit the news release to a Satellite 118. The Satellite 118 transmits the news release down to the various customer Media Receiver Nodes 120, where the customers will transfer this information to a Media Editorial System 124 before releasing the news release to the public.
Satellite broadcast is a functional technology for simultaneous news distribution. However, there are problems with this technology that the industry has been forced to live with. Satellite transmissions are one way broadcasts. Thus, even where simultaneous disclosure is required, there is no means to know that the transmission was successful. It is too expensive to put a transmitter at a news media receiver, and therefore, wire service transmissions are sent out “blind,” having no verification message coming back from the media point to validate receipt of the news release. Referring back to FIG. 1, the Satellite Information Distribution System 100 does utilize a Monitor 126. This Monitor 126 is connected to the Satellite Uplinks 116 so that every Client Submission 102 distributed through the Satellite Uplinks 116 is also sent to the Monitor 126. While utilizing a Monitor 126 in this fashion is an effective way to verify the operation of the Satellite Uplink 116, the Monitor 126 is unable to verify that any of the client Submissions 102 reach the customer Media Receiver Nodes 120. Therefore, this architecture provides no acceptable method of verifying receipt of the Client Submissions 102 by the Media Receiver Nodes 120. Land based communications networks are readily available which provide for two-way communications. However, these land based networks are far too expensive to set up and maintain to make it a cost effective choice for broadcast technology.
Introduction of the public Internet in the mid-1990's provided a new communications medium for the dissemination of news to the media community. As the Internet matured in the late 1990's, certain advantages over satellite technology started to become apparent. Internet technology is faster, cheaper, global not regional, and is a bi-directional communications medium.
However, the Internet has one major flaw that prohibits itself from being accepted as a viable network for financial disclosure. The Internet's multi-point packet forwarded architecture can not insure that information would reach multiple destinations in a fair and simultaneous fashion.
What is needed is the ability to provide near simultaneous delivery of information over a packet routed network architecture.
What is also needed is the ability to provide near simultaneous delivery of information in an inexpensive, fast, global, bi-directional communication medium having means to verify receipt of a transmission.